


stolen & golden

by ivermectin



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everything is Worse, Darkfic, Gen, I don't know how to tag this, Jealousy is bad actually, Not Canon Compliant, POV Lilith Clawthorne, Whump, it's terrible all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26379517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Lilith Clawthorne has always been competitive.This will lead either to her ruin, or to her sister's, or perhaps even to both.
Relationships: Eda Clawthorne & Lilith Clawthorne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	stolen & golden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/gifts).



> Please heed the tags!!  
> Content warning: vomit mention in part 3, so if that's a trigger, keep that in mind!  
> ~  
> thank you emma for the reassurance & support!

1

Lilith never calls her little sister Eda. She’s never done it – it’s always been Edalyn. And Edalyn never calls her Lilith, just Lily.

Lilith gets ready for school meticulously every morning. Wears her favourite shoes, wears the cutest glasses she’s got, files her nails, does her tie neatly. Not a hair out of place, she’s a real daffodil.

And then there’s Edalyn, a mess, mud on her skirt, tie undone, buttons popping open, twig in her hair, her smile ever so crooked.

Edalyn doesn’t care; she has never cared. Edalyn waltzes in, and the world follows her steps, and Lilith knows she can’t ever dare to compete with any of that.

Sometimes, as Lilith brushes Edalyn’s hair, she wishes they were both other people; wishes Edalyn wasn’t her younger sister, wishes she were a stranger, somewhere else, someone else.

If there’s just one spot, just one position, Edalyn will get it. She always does.

Lilith loves her little sister, but she hates losing. Sometimes, she thinks that she maybe hates losing even more than she loves Edalyn.

That’s just the sort of person she is.

2

The curse is power, swelling in Lilith’s hands, spiralling out against her, turning her into a malevolent black cloud. She opens the door and aims. Her sister is smiling in her sleep.

Unknown to them both: her sister will never smile in her sleep again.

3

It’s something worth talking about – how one mistake can lead you somewhere you would never expect to go. While Edalyn Clawthorne is turning into an owl beast for the first time, body full of ache and pain, Lilith Clawthorne, self-proclaimed bitch supreme, eyes on the prize, is leaning over a toilet basin, retching her guts out.

There’s no way to get everything you want in this world, Lilith knows. She just hadn’t thought this through; hadn’t realised the gamble she was taking, the trade-off she’d made. Her body shook, and she put it down to anxiety, because what else could it be?

4

Every day, Lilith’s power grows stronger. Flowers bloom in her wake. A flick of the wrist sends ice shooting with unimaginable force and precision. Her hair grows black, grows straight, and she smiles with a cruelty that she makes almost regal.

And unknown to her, every day, Edalyn grows weaker. She spits a tooth in the sink, gets a gold replacement. Goes grey. Gets an ache in her limbs. Needs a potion every day to stay in her body. Edalyn lives in a world that’s not kind to her – her body’s oversensitive to external stimuli, her fingers go stiff enough that she gives up playing the piano. She takes more and more medicine, more elixirs and potions and magic pills sparkling with the power of the sun, just to survive.

And Lilith sings to herself in the shower, and gets stronger and fiercer, and tries to forget, tries not to focus on the guilt she feels.

It takes her too long to realise the problem.

5

The power in Lilith’s body isn’t manageable, not by a long shot. It’s like running on too much caffeine. She shoots off bolts everywhere, feels like there’s fire in her veins.

The emperor gives her a month off, tells her in a threat worded ever so politely that she had better find out what is wrong with her magic and fix it.

In the dead of the night, Lilith watches with horror as the silver of her magic glows into a golden; a _stolen_ golden. Her ice shatters into fire, and she realises what this means with a stab of horror – she has drained her sister empty.

6

Once, when they were kids, drinking apple blood soda (Lilith had added the fizz, and Edalyn had been overjoyed, worshipped her practically), Edalyn had given Lilith a judgemental look as she’d poured herself a fifth glass.

“Lily, can’t you ever stop?” she’d asked, but not meanly – just curious.

And Lilith had smiled kindly, and said, “Well, Edalyn, it _is_ summertime. I’m thirsty.”

She’d finished the jug almost entirely by yourself, and Edalyn had said, with a childish smile, “You’re like a jug with no bottom.”

“Stop, you,” Lilith had said, but she’d been laughing.

She isn’t laughing now.

7

“Edalyn,” Lilith yells, running in the direction of the Owl House.

Except, there’s no Owl House.

There’s nothing there.

8

Edalyn Clawthorne was a real firecracker, full of power, energy and spunk. And Edalyn’s power remained Edalyn’s, even in Lilith’s body. She could feel it crackling, and she knew with a stab of horror that there was nothing she could do to deserve it, to do it justice, to own it.

Edalyn knew how to control her magic. Lilith didn’t, Lilith _couldn’t_. And like ants swarming around sugar, Edalyn’s magic sparked, formed sheaths around Lilith’s bones.

Lilith knows it’s happening as it happens. She lies in bed, feeling the way it smothers her. All in all, she thinks, getting digested is a less painful process than she’d expected.

She closes her eyes.

She won’t open them again.

9

People talk about it all the time. The story doesn’t grow old. It gets plaques at museums, gets its own novel.

The Legend of the Clawthorne sisters: in which one sister tried to destroy the other, the sister destroyed, the sister rebound, and the ultimate end.

It’s a scandal unlike any other. It’s a tragedy, just awful enough to make everyone avert their eyes, just relatable enough to turn into a moral story, a cautionary tale.

“Be jealous all you like,” parents will tell their children. “But if you think with your envy, it’ll eat you whole one day, and it won’t be pretty.”

Others turn it into a story of greed. “Fill yourself up with something you haven’t earned, and you will corrode,” they say.

And in the forest, somewhere beyond life but not nearly at death yet, two golden eyes watch the folk go about their own business. And the undead owner of the two golden eyes mourns her sister. And the undead owner of the two golden eyes mourns herself, and the power that was taken from her.

Power, wielded improperly, kills.

Maybe the Owl House faded into dust, but this wisp that is Edalyn lingers on, like the mist.

10

 _Well,_ the spirit of Eda thinks, _I may not have a body now, but at least nothing hurts anymore._

She knows that there is no way forward, just as there is no way back. There is just this – lingering. Watching.

Remembering.

11

Maybe there is just this. Two sisters, taking turns at watching the other die, while the rest of the world is quiet.

Maybe this story doesn’t have a moral. Maybe all it does is _hurt._

**Author's Note:**

> ......... i don't know either.


End file.
